The Last Of Us: The Series: Episode 1

Teased a few months back, the first episode of What Remains, a series based on Naughty Dog’s upcoming The Last Of Us, is now out. It’s 18 minutes long While it looks like an official tie-in, it’s actually the work of Manifest Film, a team of gaming filmakers who, when this is done, are hoping…

The Moneysaver: Baldur’s Gate, Logitech G500, Arrested Development

There’s always money in the Moneysaver. Memorial Day seems like as good an excuse as any to save money, so let’s get right to it. Amazon has the Logitech G500 Gaming Mouse for $38, an easy sell if you’re in the market for a new input device, and the BenQ Official Major League Gaming Monitor…

The Games That Make It Hardest To Say Goodbye

There haven’t been a ton of new games out lately, so maybe you’ve had time to finish one or two that had been sitting on your backburner. And maybe, if you were lucky, one of those games was good enough that you had a hard time letting go. It’s a unique and lovely thing, the…

The People Behind The Games We Play

Happy three-day weekend! Or, to those of you who don’t live in America, happy Monday! Given that it’s an Official Kotaku Holiday, we thought this might be a good time to revisit some old stories. So we’ve gone through the archives and dug up some some of our best pieces for your holiday reading pleasure.…

Sonic and Mega Man’s Enemies Team Up to Make Some F***ed-Up Robots

Knuckles Man.? Rose Woman? Shadow Man? Only two horrible minds could’ve come up with evil robot antagonists like these. Dr. Wily and Dr. Eggman’s malevolent subversion of Sonic the hedgehog’s friends gets revealed in the latest issue of the Worlds Collide crossover, an Archie Comics event pairing up Sonic and Mega for twelve issues of…

Now This Is How You Do A Mobile Beat-Em Up

No d-pad. No buttons to mash. No virtual controls whatsoever. Frantic finger-swipes are the order of the day in Combo Crew, an homage to the ancient arcade beat-em ups of our forefathers. Those ancient games of yore gave us a goal — generally rescuing a kidnapped family member or significant other — and set us…

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: It’s been a great long weekend for TAY with tons of well-written provocative pieces. Among them: SloopyDrew calls for revolution against a top-down, overly constricted vision of gaming’s future. GiantBoyDetective looks at more fictional video games from the insides of TV shows in his recurring…

Halo Music Video Catapults You Into The Middle Of a Spartan Firefight

This Halo insipred and -themed music video easily wins “the most Spartan costumes featured in a clip ever trophy,” as a whole division of Spartans get into an intense firefight in an odd, but awesome setting with a piano in the centre. A pretty large-scale video for William Joseph and Lindsey Stirling’s song—, must have…

Man Cave Fan Fiction

About two years after The End came a memorable day: Mark unearthed an incredible stash. Coarse-knuckled and goose-prickling under a wan, strange sun, he hunched over a small old dumpster he found behind the old Winn Dixie, and pried away at it. It took some time, as the thing had corroded shut. The color and…

Mojang’s Scrolls Enters Open Beta on June 3rd, Has a Snazzy Trailer

Minecraft developer Mojang’s card-game-slash-board-game-with-RPG-elements is finally seeing the light of day. It certainly took them long enough. In addition to giving us an impression of what the battling, trading, and collecting will look like, the trailer also has a launch date for the game’s open beta: June 3rd.

Two Melons Just Sold for $15,730 in Japan

Guess the Japanese economy is picking up? On Friday, two Yubari melons, weighing over 8 pounds, sold for 1.6 million yen (US$15,730). That’s a couple grand more than last year’s priciest melons. Things are looking up! What’s more, this is the third highest price ever paid for Yubari melons, AP reports. Typical melons are certainly…

Notch’s Golden PS1 Is Really, Really Pretty

The Minecraft creator has recently tweeted the picture to the left/above, adding that the console—a gold-colored PlayStation 1—was part of a “VIP invitation to an E3 event from Sony.” So shiny. Unfortunately, no word if it actually works—without cables, Notch has no way to power the thing on. [Thanks, NeoGAF!]

Via Nova Crystallis comes word that Square Enix filed a trademark on April 24, 2013 in Japan for “FINAL FANTASY AGITO”. You might remember that PSP game Final Fantasy Type-0 was originally titled Final Fantasy Agito XIII. You might not! To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter…

New Japanese Photo Meme Is from Studying Too Damn Much

Online in Japan, teens often tweet things like, “I studied so much, my head hurts”, “I studied so much, my nose is gonna bleed”, or “I studied so much, I’m going crazy.” But what about when you study so much, you can defy gravity? For the past week or so, Japanese teens have been uploading…

Twitter Rises Up In Protest Over The PS4’s Rumored Used Games DRM

Yesterday, GameTrailers TV host Geoff Keighley said that, according to his sources, the PlayStation 4 will employ some form of digital rights management when dealing with used games. Twitter’s gamer community took it upon themselves to show Sony how bad an idea this is Spurred by Keighley’s words, numerous gamers on Twitter are currently bombarding…

Man’s Video Gaming Prompts Wife To Petition For Divorce

A young Chinese man in Sichuan province is in a little hot water with his wife and the courts because of his affinity for video games. The man, Zhang Ping, is being taken to court by his wife for neglecting his household chores in order to play online games, reports News Guangdong.com. 25 year-old Zhang…

Here, Have Some Games of Thrones in Japanese

There’s no Game of Thrones this week. How to cope? With a preview of its upcoming Japanese language disc release. While many of the books have gotten Japanese language editions, the series hasn’t yet reached the public in Japan in the way Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter have. The show is already being…

SuperDaE, the next-gen hacker, tweeted that he was granted bail and that he won’t be releasing his “treasure trove of gaming info”. According to SuperDaE (also via Twitter): “I guess everyone will have to wait for another day, I won’t be removing the trap however, just to be safe.” His comment was followed by a…

Stormtrooper Surrounded by Japanese Police After Murderous Tweet

Twitter account @vmlvlltl recently uploaded a message: “At noon on May 26, 2013, I will kill people at Sapporo Station.” This was @vmlvlltl’s sole message, and the user’s name was “Phantom Slasher Notice” (Toorima Yokoku or 通り魔予告). The account is now suspended, but Twitter users in Sapporo began re-tweeting the threat and warning each other.…

Halo: Reach Sure Was Pretty Before The Covenant Blew Everything Up

Alex Chin Yu Chu is a Taiwanese-born concept artist living in the US who has worked for companies like Bungie, Firaxis, LEGO and Eidos. In that time he’s lent his talents to the production of Halo:Reach, Destiny, XCOM and Tomb Raider Anniversary. You can see more of Alex’s work at his personal site and CGHub…